


A Thousand Words for Water

by victoria_p (musesfool)



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Gen, Swimming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-17
Updated: 2016-05-17
Packaged: 2018-06-09 02:04:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6884812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musesfool/pseuds/victoria_p
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chewie howls something that translates to, "Just throw her in and hope she floats," and Artoo trills in disapproval of that strategy. "She's a Jedi," Chewie replies. "She'll be fine."</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Thousand Words for Water

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to condiemint and assassinregrets on tumblr for answering my questions about Skellig Michael.

Ahch-To

The ocean on Ahch-To is even more brilliant in reality than it was in Rey's dreams. She spends her mornings training with Luke, and in the afternoons, she sits at the edge of his cliffside home and stares at the sea. She thinks she's getting the hang of this meditation thing Luke keeps talking about, since the sight of the ocean soothes something deep inside her that she didn't even know needed soothing. Sometimes the water sparkles like the finest diamond-cut transparisteel in the afternoon sunlight and sometimes it churns gray and rough in the rain, but Rey loves it in all its myriad forms. 

Rain is another new experience, wet and shocking and never the same twice; Rey dances through large fat beads that splat like bugs on a windscreen on warm afternoons, and huddles in the chill of night against small sharp needles that mist her hair and land on her lashes like tears.

She loves it, even when it chills her to the bone and she sits shivering by the heater in the little cave Luke calls home.

The spray from the incoming tide also froths and mists, leaving the taste of salt on her lips and stinging the many cuts and scrapes she's accumulated during training. 

Artoo warbles worriedly from a ledge above them, just beyond reach of the spray; salt water is bad for droids, he informs her seriously, and she nods in acknowledgement.

"Bad for droids but good for humans, I think," she says, shielding her eyes from the glare of the sun reflecting off the water.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Luke asks as she removes her outer robe to reveal the shorts and tank top she's chosen as a swimming costume. Her feet are callused from running around the island barefoot, but the rocky shore is so slippery from the outgoing tide that she wishes she could wear her boots. Luke had vetoed that idea and she knows he's right. They'd take ages to dry out and they'd smell terrible forever after. Not to mention weighing her down when she needs to be light as a feather to keep from drowning.

Chewie howls something that translates to, "Just throw her in and hope she floats," and Artoo trills in disapproval of that strategy. "She's a Jedi," Chewie replies with a nonchalant wave of one massive paw. "She'll be fine."

Luke looks skeptical but doesn't contradict him.

"I have to learn sometime," she says. 

"I agree," Luke says in that reasonable tone that pings her like a warning, since it usually means he's telling her something she doesn't want hear, "but this isn't the best place to do it." He gestures, and even his gunmetal hand glitters in the sunlight and the spray. "This is literally throwing you in the deep end."

The waves crash on the rocks, and what seems beautiful and soothing from the height of the clifftop is terrifying in person. The waves seem almost alive, ravenous in their hunger for the rocks and whatever else they can devour. They remind her suddenly of the Sinking Fields on Jakku, which could (and often did) consume anything foolish enough to wander into them. The spray prickles at Rey's ankles and shins, and she scrambles away from it, back up the slippery rock. Luke reaches out and steadies her, and she clings to his hand.

"I think you're right," she says, nodding firmly and holding onto him. 

Luke grins, and she can't help grinning back.

*

Telerath

"This place is weird," Rey says as they explore the old hotel. Everything is worn and a little shabby, like someone wanted it to be pretty but couldn't afford new things, or maybe it was nice once and has been left to sink into its own kind of oblivion. Places are very much like people, Rey thinks, and this one reminds her of old spacers whose glory days had long since passed. They often sat around the lone cantina in Niima Outpost, trading fish stories of days long gone by. Rey had soaked them up like sunlight, of course, but always from a safe distance.

"You think every place is weird," Jessika replies, not unkindly.

" _Jakku_ was weird," Finn says. "You wouldn't think sand could be terrifying, but I saw it swallow a TIE fighter whole." He shudders and Rey puts a comforting hand on his arm. He doesn't know the half of it.

"Jakku is a junkyard," Poe agrees. "Telerath has been settled and abandoned a few times over the last few millennia. Before the First Order rose, it was making a comeback as a resort world. The southern hemisphere is still pretty popular, but there's not much going on up here in the north." 

Certainly there's enough space for the Resistance here; they lost a lot of people in the assault on Starkiller base, but the destruction it caused in the New Republic has led to people even from Core worlds flocking to the Resistance. Most of the old hotel's basic systems are intact--the electric grid is reparable and the plumbing still works--and there's nothing else within kilometers of the hotel. Jessika says it was a retreat for super rich people who wanted to vacation in privacy.

Poe's voice jolts Rey out of her reverie. "You haven't seen the best part yet." He leads them through a lobby painted in gold and white stripes, the red carpet threadbare beneath their feet. It's fancier than the base on D'Qar, but it has a dusty, stifled feel to it that Rey doesn't like. Maybe the rush of a Resistance base would liven it up, make it feel alive again. That's what they're here to find out.

Once they pass the ornately carved frame of the large door that once opened onto the back acreage, Rey feels better. It's a warm evening, and the air smells sweet. They walk along remnants of a graveled path, but the hedges lining it have grown wild, and the grass swaying in the light breeze brushes the tops of Rey's knees. 

Poe leads them over a finely wrought bridge, though the creek that once burbled beneath it is long gone, and through a decrepit fence that can't even keep out the weeds.

"Check it out," he says, gesturing grandly at the large, empty area before them.

Jessika whoops and pumps her fist.

"It's a hole in the ground," Finn says, puzzled, and Rey is grateful he said it before she did.

"A hole in the ground is the best part?" she asks, raising her eyebrows skeptically and trying to figure out why Poe and Jessika are so excited. It's a large rectangular hole made of duracrete and painted a faded, peeling white. "Does it lead to an underground hangar?"

"My friends," Poe says with a grin and a shake of his head, slinging one arm over her shoulder and the other over Finn's, "you have _so much_ to learn. Come with me."

There's a shed not far from the hole in the ground that it contains a water pump and filtration system. Though the shed is rusty and smells of dead leaves (Rey likes the scent; it still smells more like living things than the hot metal and burning fuel scent of Jakku), the equipment is in decent shape. 

"You can get it working, right?" Poe says.

"Yeah," she answers, confident, even though she has no real idea what the equipment is for. "Of course. A little lube and some elbow grease and it'll be fine." She gives him a little grin that he returns. She likes the sly way his mouth curls, like they're sharing a secret. Maybe they are; she hasn't asked but she thinks machinery might speak to Poe the same way it does to her. He's not Force-sensitive, not the way she and Finn are, but he's got a sense for his X-wing that all the good pilots she's met have. It makes her feel close to him, anyway, and she likes that, too.

Fixing the equipment is not as easily done as said. There's a clog in the pipes that has to be cleared, a mass of dead leaves and the carcasses of small animals that really does smell terrible. And the first time they manage to fill the hole--"It's a pool," Poe keeps saying but Finn and Rey are both skeptical, Finn because it looks nothing like the pristine training pools where he learned to swim, and Rey because she can't imagine people wasting water by filling holes in the ground with it--the water is brown and smells like rust. There's another apparatus to drain the water, and Rey manages to stifle her instinct to save and boil as much of it as possible as it gushes out of the hole.

The second time they fill it, they get the chemical filtration balance wrong, and it smells so heavily of chlorine that standing anywhere within three meters of it makes Rey's eyes water and her skin feel tight.

"Third time's the charm," Poe says with a grin and shrug as they drain the pool and try again. 

Telerath was the last stop on this scouting mission, and they've already stayed away four rotations longer than they were supposed to (Rey insists the incident with the pirates was not her fault; things just happen around her sometimes, and Poe can stop laughing any time), but all four of them are now invested in making this pool thing work, even if Rey is still dubious about the whole proposition. Rey's not sure what Poe tells the General about the delay, but they get permission to stay a few days more.

Jessika handles the chlorination this time and she calibrates the filter properly. They wait until the next morning to try swimming in it, though.

"We should skinny dip," Poe says with a mischievous grin.

"I don't know what that means," Finn says.

"Swimming naked," Poe replies with an exaggerated leer.

"Why don't we make sure the chlorination doesn't eat our skin off first," Jessika says. "Don't want you to lose any important parts." She gives Poe a lascivious wink that makes Rey and Finn giggle, and hums thoughtfully. "Though a durasteel di--"

Poe cuts her off with a laughing, "Shut up, you," and they bump each other rambunctiously. Thankfully, they're not too close to the edge or Rey would be afraid they'd topple over into the pool.

"I don't know how to swim," she announces loudly to Finn when it looks like Poe and Jessika aren't going to stop play-fighting any time soon. They all stare at her in shock. She gives them a small, rueful grin and shrugs a shoulder. "Jakku's a desert planet."

"A creepy desert planet," Finn agrees, nodding emphatically. "Where the sand can eat you up like a sarlacc."

Poe gives her a warm smile. "We can show you."

They try. Oh, do they try. But even with all the meditation she's done, even with the strong connection to the Force she's cultivating, she can't bring herself to trust the water enough to float. She's fine when Poe or Finn keeps a hand on her shoulder or the small of her back, a spot of warmth in the cold water, but she flails in panic whenever they let go, and sinks to the bottom like a stone.

So Rey ends up sitting on the edge and dangling her feet in while the others swim and splash and play like children. She doesn't mind. She enjoys watching them have fun.

There'll be time enough to learn, if the Resistance does build its base here.

*

Naboo

Naboo is blue and green and beautiful in ways Rey doesn't--couldn't--expect. It's not just the ocean or the lush greenery or the way the sky seems to be a deeper, more brilliant shade of blue than anyplace else she's been. It's everything in combination, and the way it all works together organically, that almost overwhelms her senses. It doesn't seem fair that everything on Naboo--even the spaceport and the customs kiosk--is beautiful, not when the place she comes from (it might not be where she was born, but it's definitely where she's _from_ , the sand scouring her into shape as surely as it did any dried up old salt bed or canyon in the badlands) is so full of nothing that even its graveyards are barren and sere. 

Jakku is sand and metal, leathered skin and burned out fuel cells, with only the barest hint of life hanging on by tooth and claw; Naboo is alive as far as the eye can see. Even the cemetery is lush with greenery, and especially so in this shrine to a woman who died long before Rey was born. The Force pulses with it in a way that feels insistent. It wants her attention, and she doesn't know why. 

She glances at Luke and the General (Leia, Rey thinks, trying it out in her head if not yet on her tongue), to see if they feel it too, but they're too busy laying a blanket of roses on their mother's grave. The scent hangs heavy and sweet in the air and it makes Rey's nose itch.

She eases back to where the others are standing, Poe and Finn looking around curiously while Chewbacca bows his head in respect. Even the droids are quiet for once. 

Rey still doesn't know why she's here, but it seems rude to ask. Leia wanted to come in the Falcon, and that's reason enough, she supposes. There's probably some lesson Luke means to share that she just hasn't gotten yet, but no doubt they'll be meditating later, and she'll figure it out.

"The Naberries invited us to a family dinner," Luke murmurs once they're on a shuttle heading out of Theed. He points his chin at Poe and Finn, sitting a couple of rows ahead of them. "You three can entertain yourselves while we make awkward small talk with the cousins we've never met."

"Speak for yourself," Leia interrupts, settling into the aisle seat on Rey's other side. Rey doesn't know why Luke thinks he can ever keep anything secret from her. She knows everything. "I met them a few times back in the old days, though I didn't know we were related at the time." She looks at Luke's plain black mourning clothes and sighs. "I don't suppose you brought the Jedi robes?"

Luke's mouth twists. "They're a little ostentatious, don't you think?"

Leia laughs, just a little mocking. "It's Naboo, Luke. Everything is formal and ostentatious here."

Rey frowns in confusion. Luke's robes are plain gray and cream linen, like the clothes she'd always worn on Jakku. They seem more suited to his island hermitage than anything formal, and he hasn't worn them since he left Ahch-To.

"It's not the robes themselves," Luke says, accurately reading her face if not her thoughts. "It's what they represent." He shakes his head. "After everything, I'm not sure I should claim--"

"If anyone has the right, it's you," Leia says calmly before he can finish. "And I've never understood your penchant for black."

"It's easier to keep clean," he replies glibly. This has the sound of an old argument, and Leia rolls her eyes. It makes them both seem much younger, and Rey can imagine Han putting his two credits in if he were here. She smiles at the thought of what he'd say.

"As long as I don't have to dress up, we're good," she says, glancing between them. 

"You can _undress_ ," Leia says, putting a hand on Rey's arm with a grin. "There's a lake on the estate. Very beautiful, I'm told."

"And calm," Luke supplies. His grin matches his sister's. "Maybe you can finally learn to swim."

*

The lake _is_ beautiful and calm, just like everything else on the planet. Its surface ripples serenely in the warm breeze and its edges lap invitingly at the shore. The sand is damp and cool against the soles of Rey's feet, not a combination she's experienced or expected, and the water is just a little chilly against her ankles. She imagines it'll feel good on her skin after the humidity of the day. 

The long summer evening turns everything to gold and blue, and Rey takes a moment to appreciate it all: the soft whisper of the wind, the grit of sand between her toes, the tranquility of the water, broken only by the powerful strokes of Poe's arms and legs as he cuts through it. He swims the way he flies, so skillfully it looks like it doesn't take any skill at all, and Rey thinks he probably learned to do both at about the same time.

Finn stays by her side, his hand warm and sure in hers as they wade in up to their hips. "You got this," he says to her as Poe swims back to them. He looks at Finn and they both nod firmly, as if they've planned this. "And we got you."

"Come on," Poe says with another one of his smiles, this one encouraging. "You can do it."

"We're not gonna let you drown," says Finn, his sincerity shining in his eyes and in the Force. 

Rey believes them. She turns toward the shore and lets herself slowly fall backward into the cool embrace of the lake, trusting it to hold her. If it doesn't, she's sure Finn and Poe will help keep her afloat. 

end


End file.
